Weekly Report - 16 August 2018 (WR-18-32)

COLOMBIA: Duque seeks to reinforce sovereignty

President Iván Duque paid his first visit upon taking office to the archipelago of San Andrés y Providencia in the Caribbean Sea. It was a statement of intent. San Andrés is located 800km north-west of Colombia and just 150km east of Nicaragua, with which it is locked in a legal dispute over surrounding maritime waters. Duque’s second port of call was the violence-torn region of Catatumbo in the department of Norte de Santander bordering Venezuela. This too sent out a message. Duque is promising not just to crack down hard on illegal armed groups in Colombia but also to end the prevailing sense of neglect in the country’s peripheries.